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“Hi,” he said, and bloody hell, why was he waving awkwardly at this well-groomed, chicly dressed, not-at-all-sweaty gentleman? “I’m here to see Patrick Lake?” he continued. “Erm…Simone should have let you know I was coming? Simone Toussaint?” He hated the way everything he was saying came out as a question, like he knew deep down that he wasn’t supposed to be here, and any moment the man on the other side of the desk would sense it, too. But after a few hushed words into an earpiece that gave him the look of a backing dancer for Janet Jackson, the concierge nodded briskly and directed him toward the elevator.
Simone—he assumed—was standing there waiting when the doors slid open on the third floor, immaculate in a Gucci suit and Louboutins.
“Hello, Will,” she said. “It’s so good to finally meet in person.” Her face gave no indication that it was, indeed, good to meet him. Perhaps she was as partial to Botox as Jordan. Or she simply didn’t see this bedraggled stray from England as worth the risk of wrinkles.
Here she is, he thought. The woman who has held my fate in her hands all this time.
Will felt about Simone the way he felt about every other powerful woman he had ever met: as fascinated as he was cowed. Heels like that were powerful but, he knew from experience, hurt like hell after longer than a few minutes. He wondered if she kept a pair of sneakers under her desk for when nobody was around to intimidate. If she tucked a napkin into the collar of her ivory blouse while she was eating lunch. Not that Simone was the kind of woman who looked like she spilled things. Or ate, for that matter. And god, her makeup! That winged eyeliner could cut a bitch.
Enough! he told himself. We’re not here to stan.
“Hi, Simone,” he said. “Thank you for the flight. Honestly. I’ll pay you back.”
Simone exhaled impatiently at the notion that the price of his air fare might be remotely consequential. When Will had phoned her, he hadn’t had much of a clue what he wanted to say, other than to try and arrange a face-to-face with her client. He’d reasoned that, understanding now how Patrick’s world worked, he should show that he was willing to follow the rules, and check with Patrick’s “people” that he was open to talking. More truthfully, coward that he was, he’d been too afraid to call Patrick himself.
His best-case scenario had been that Simone would facilitate a Zoom. Instead, after hearing him out, she had simply said, “Leave it with me,” and five minutes later a British Airways reservation had landed in his inbox. He had no idea why she’d done it—she certainly didn’t seem the type prone to sudden bouts of generosity—but he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the impeccably lined mouth either. He was just glad his passport was still in date.
“If the niceties are out of the way?” Simone took off at a brisk pace down the hallway. “Everybody is getting ready through here.”
“Everybody? Meaning…”
“Patrick will be here soon. He and a few of the others are attending the premiere together.” Simone paused in the last doorway at the end of the corridor. “Will, listen. I wouldn’t usually dream of distracting my client right before a premiere by flying in his secret ex-boyfriend. It is, frankly, amateurish behavior.” She examined her flawless manicure. “But after an unfortunate misunderstanding, I happen to have some making up to do to Patrick. And I know that he has not been the same since he came back from England. So. Here we are.”
“Here we are,” Will echoed, still not understanding fully.
“I will permit you to be here,” Simone said, “on the proviso that you wait for Patrick in the last bedroom on the right in the suite, do not interact with any other members of the cast, and when they all leave to attend the premiere, you stay behind. Do we have a deal?”
Will wondered how many other lives had been sent on a new trajectory by a verbal covenant in a hotel corridor. So this is Hollywood, he thought.
He thrust his hands in his pockets and said: “Deal.” He crossed his fingers, unseen, and followed Simone into the suite.
“Remember,” Simone said. “Go straight to that far room and don’t talk to anyb—”
“Will!” The entire room seemed to call his name at the same time in various levels of surprise: Audra was here, as were Hector and Corey and a handful of other faintly recognizable and pleasingly symmetrical faces.
“Will!” Audra sprang up from the chair, where Estelle was applying the last flourishes to her makeup, running over to hug him and thinking better of it at the last minute, air-kissing him so that her face remained untouched.
“It’s so good to see you!” she said. “You look terrible!”
Will couldn’t disagree, and confronted with a roomful of some of the most beautiful people on this coast, he suddenly felt completely out of his element. This was Patrick’s utterly bizarre world, not his. He couldn’t confront the man he maybe-loved and maybe-always-had in the painter’s trousers and tank top he’d sat sweating in for eleven hours. Maybe this entire enterprise had been a mistake.
“Bro!” Hector and Corey both said, almost in unison, and without a single jot of the homophobia Will had come to expect from that simple word.
“Hi, guys!” he replied, overcome with relief that they were both huggers and no embarrassing man-shake was required.
“Are you here to see Patrick?” asked Corey.
“That’s kind of the idea, yeah.”
“Well, thank god, goddess, and all the others for that,” said Audra. “He has been a total bummer these last few months. Have you ever done a press tour while lumbered with a sulking, brokenhearted sad sack? Not fun, let me tell you.”
Will decided to let all the ways in which the word “bummer” got lost in translation to an English homosexual go uncommented upon.
“It’s good to see you, man,” said Hector, clapping Will on the shoulder, nearly sending him through a wall in the process.
“Yeah, dude,” said Corey. “The gobshitery has been off the charts around here.” He paused. “Did I use that right?”
Will seesawed his hand. “Close enough,” he said. “You guys look…Bloody hell.”
